Three days of fucking brilliance
I love that line from Fight Club about how you have to work for perfection and you can't expect it to last for more than a moment.
My Chemical Romance aren't my favourite band in the world. You could be forgiven for thinking they are, given how much I talk about them, but there are others that I love a little bit more and probably always will. But they are a band that I love very dearly and who have been important to me for a long time, and though I've had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the band and their fans over the last year, I've just had three perfect days of MCR in a row and I couldn't ask for anything better. Ever.
Bitterness and navel-gazing
It seems like a long time since I first saw @AgentCherriCola tweeting about eating soundwaves, or was blown away by the Art Is The Weapon trailer, or sat in a Sydney hotel room with ladyfoxxx, gripping each other's hands as the last few notes of 'Na Na Na' faded out and we plunged into the unknown world of Danger Days, Track Three. Everything about being an MCR fan seemed shiny and new and unbelievably exciting, and overflowing with possibility.
But as excited as I was at first, seeing what they got up to and how alive the new shows seemed to be, as the World Contamination Tour went on over the following year, it just felt further and further away. Instead of enjoying watching videos of the band's shows online, or hearing accounts from friends who were there, I started hating it, because everyone was having so much fun and I just never got a chance to join in. The band seemed to tour the US, Europe and Japan again and again without ever coming somewhere I could even consider travelling to, and more and more, being a fan of this band, and knowing so many other fans all over the world started to make me feel shut out instead of included.
Part of it is just the way I act as a fan. I don't really do squee, and I absolutely don't do hyperbole. Not to mention that I don't think the members of this band, or any band, are wonderful, perfect, magical people - I think they're normal flawed people who are in a band. (And sometimes do shitty things, which I'm not going to pretend are okay because they're done by someone I like. I'm looking at you, Frank "go sit on a coathanger" Iero.) I don't think they're essentially different from any other band I like. And somewhere along the line I started to feel like a bad fan because I didn't, as the saying goes, drink the Kool-Aid.
And it doesn't help when you keep hearing, over and over again, how incredible their live shows are when you never fucking get to see any.
Most of the time I don't believe that I'm entitled to anything as a fan. The thing is, though, this wasn't the start of my frustration with MCR - it was the peak of it. The last time I'd seen the band play live was in 2007, when they put on a show that was frankly kind of shit. Bob was in hospital, they were all tired, and when they got up on stage it was painfully clear that they didn't actually want to be there. Then they were announced as headliners for Soundwave Festival here in 2010 and I thought, finally, I'll see them again when they're fresh and enjoying themselves, and all together. Except that then they pulled out of the tour and I'd paid over $100 non-refundable dollars for a festival that no longer featured the band I wanted to see.
So yeah, I felt like they did owe me something. By the time Reading & Leeds came around, every time someone said "Thank you MCR" I thought "Fuck you, MCR" instead. The only good thing about it was that I had a bunch of friends who were in the same boat. I really think masterpenguin82 and barefoot_starz are the only ones who really know how deep my bitterness got, because they shared it, and we could all be grumpy we-love-you-but-we-hate-you fans together. (I'd include pikasafire in this, but I think she was always better at staying positive than I was. Especially since she flew to the US to see them anyway. :p) It's not the only reason we got to be such close friends, but it helped.
We found out that MCR were playing at Big Day Out the evening before I flew out to Adelaide to see Panic at the Disco with them - the timing couldn't have been better if we tried. I officially put my bitterness on hold for a weekend to just be EXCITED, and we talked with delight about how great it was going to be to see them at last. And there was nothing more I wanted than to finally see the band with these friends, my comrades-in-grumpiness who had shared my bitterness and torn feelings at the way we'd felt jilted as fans for so long.
And then things changed, and plans had to be changed, and in the end it turned out I'd be going to Big Day Out without any of my fangirl friends, and masterpenguin82 and barefoot_starz wouldn't get to see the band play at all. For a while I felt bad about it, because it didn't seem fair, but I got to see MCR at a sideshow with pikasafire as well as kashiichan who had been through all the highs and lows of past shitty/cancelled tours with me, and in the end I got a really fantastic three days.
Sunday, Big Day Out, and a moment to myself
I did a review of BDO already, but I want to talk about it specifically for a moment here. I was disappointed that I didn't get to share this moment, the first time I'd seen this band in five years, with other friends who had wanted it just as badly at various points, but in a way it was kind of awesome that I got it to myself, too. I was right on the barrier, on left hand side of the stage, but I could see everything. (And get cups of water from the security staff to pour over my head because damn it was hot, and plus it made the headbanging more fun.) After all the times I'd had to listen to other people's accounts of MCR concerts and feel left out of such awesome experiences, I got to have one that was just mine, that nobody else got, either. And though it probably doesn't make much sense to anyone else, it kind of straightened me out, made everything feel okay again.
It's because it was amazing, not at all the disappointment I'd prepared myself for, and because it was just like seeing any other band. I'd said to ladyfoxxx a few weeks earlier that I wished sometimes I could just go back to thinking of MCR as a band and not THE band, the fandom, the community, everything. But it was just a normal band experience, like any other awesome band I go and see, and it was a relief because it made me realise that it's okay to think of them as ordinary human beings. It's okay that I don't think they're made of pixie dust or that they're the best people in the world. It doesn't mean I love them less that a fan who only talks about them in hyperbole and thinks they can do no wrong. I'm as much a fan as anyone else and I just fucking loved watching them play.
And I guess after a year of feeling shut out, there's a kind of beautiful justification in getting something that feels like it's just yours.
Monday, exhaustion and a signing
About a week before the tour began, notalwaysweak casually mentioned that the JB Hi-Fi below the office where she works was hosting an MCR signing the day after BDO and you could go in and get wristbands to take part. I promptly ran down there as fast as I could, got wristbands for myself and roxy-palace because she'd still be in Melbourne and she asked for one too, and then had ice-cream lunch with notalwaysweak while hyperventilating with excitement. Then I promptly started having this weird sense of doubt because it just didn't seem fair that I got to meet My Chemical Romance when masterpenguin82 and barefoot-starz wouldn't even get to see them play.
To cut to the chase, because this is a long enough post already, I resolved to get the band to sign things for masterpenguin82, barefoot-starz and pikasafire while I was there, and somehow I ended up making these:
The top one is for barefoot-starz and the photo sucks and doesn't show most of the design, but it's based on her tattoos. The middle one is for masterpenguin82, based on the album art for Powderfinger's Vulture Street, and the third is for pikasafire and was very, very vaguely inspired by the concept art relating to Darren Hayes' latest album. And post signing:
Frank, Gerard, Mikey, and then Ray's signature on my BDO ticket. If I thought to bring my own Killjoy mask, I would have gotten him to sign that, but I wasn't thinking that much.
I won't say much about the signing. It was cool and sort of unbelievable, because this band had seemed so distant for me for so long. As far as I know, they've never done any kind of meet-the-band/signing events in Australia before, and there was a time when I truly believed they'd never tour here again. To suddenly meet them in the flesh, have them comment on my painting skills and have Frank and Mikey shake my hand, just didn't seem like it should ever be possible. But hey. It happened. roxy-palace even took pictures.
I don't even know. I don't express excitement - or emotions in general - all that well sometimes. unless I'm writing pen and paper letters and come out sounding unnaturally sentimental and a little like Pete Wentz It was another experience that almost just confirmed for me that they're like any other band. But at the same time, holy shit, how is this my life and how do I live in a world where things like that can HAPPEN? What else can you even say? I don't know so I'm not saying anything.
Well, they probably say it to everyone, but they thought my painting was cool. That's something.
Tuesday, a headline show at last, fangirls and pure joy
Festival Hall in Melbourne isn't affectionately shortened to 'Festy Hall' just because it's the obvious way to shorten it. I'd never been to a show there before, with good reason, because it's a kind of awful venue. But I went there for MCR and have no regrets. Kind of the opposite.
I feel sad that the memory of Tuesday night's show is already slipping away a little. Yesterday I could still think back on it and put myself right in the moment, remember exactly what it felt like to sway with Lexi to 'The Only Hope For Me Is You', to hold kashiichan during 'Cancer', or to pretty much brawl with Sassbandit all the way through 'Vampire Money' like we were in our own circle pit of two. Today it's just that bit harder to put myself right in the moment.
Even though I'd been waiting for this show for five years and I'd finally be going with pikasafire (which meant more to me than any of you will ever know) as well as Sassbandit, Wereduck and kashiichan, I'd been preparing myself for disappointment. This was a band that had disappointed me a lot, and even after the unbelievably good time I'd had at BDO and the signing, I still kind of expected it from them. The venue would suck. I wouldn't be able to see anything. The mosh would be awful and I'd get knocked out and have to spend the whole show in First Aid. I'd make some kind of horrible social indecency and go home miserable because I'd damaged a friendship.
And even if none of that happened, how could one show possibly be as good as every one of the amazing concert stories I'd heard from my other friends over the past year?
I honestly don't know how, actually, but it did.
Do I want to go into details? I don't know if I can, or if I should. I have a horrible memory for setlists, though there's one on setlist.fm to aid my memory, but it's not really the point. There was the start of the show, with an eight-year-old dressed as Kobra Kid introducing the band before 'Look Alive, Sunshine' kicked in. There was Ray right in front of me, rocking out all night with a ferocity that I didn't know he was capable of. There was Gerard leaning out over the corner of the stage above us at the end of Planetary GO! and throwing a pink feather boa into the audience. There was Mikey tossing his his hair around magnificently. And there's James Dewees playing BASICALLY EVERYTHING, who is pretty much my favourite member of the band now even though he's not technically in the band. There was lots of Gerard swishiness and showponying, and the utterly gorgeous moment in the encore when he saw baby!Kobra Kid grooving at the side of the stage and pulled him out to the centre so they could both pogo together in front of everyone.
If you know the band, you know which songs feel amazing to dance to live, and why. For me it was special because of the people there, because I've never felt such a perfect balance between being carried away by the music and being so connected to my friends. Whether it was holding hands with kashiichan through the songs that hurt for both of us or roughhousing with Sassbandit, which was a new kind of high that I didn't even know I could get. Dancing with pikasafire because it will always be one of my favourite things and she just knows, okay, I don't have to explain. Even concert calling people I was missing made the whole experience better.
I didn't think just going to one concert could make me feel so connected to a community I'd started to feel separate from, but it did. And it made me realise how much I still fucking love this band, not because they're heroes but because they're a band like any other and they make fucking good music, and just like any band that makes fucking good music, nothing feels better than seeing them play it when you're surrounded by other people who love it too.
And you know the real test? I could have gone to Noel Gallagher that night instead, and I found out afterwards that Nic Cester was at Noel's show. And if I had the choice again, I'd still go to MCR.
So that was probably just about the most useless gig review ever. But come on. These things have always been more for me than for you.
Though not entirely about me, because if it was there would be even more detail about dancing and ~feelings and how Mikeyway is the only member of the band I felt even slightly inclined to vault over the table and kiss. But some details have to stay aaaall mine.
My Chemical Romance aren't my favourite band in the world. You could be forgiven for thinking they are, given how much I talk about them, but there are others that I love a little bit more and probably always will. But they are a band that I love very dearly and who have been important to me for a long time, and though I've had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the band and their fans over the last year, I've just had three perfect days of MCR in a row and I couldn't ask for anything better. Ever.
Bitterness and navel-gazing
It seems like a long time since I first saw @AgentCherriCola tweeting about eating soundwaves, or was blown away by the Art Is The Weapon trailer, or sat in a Sydney hotel room with ladyfoxxx, gripping each other's hands as the last few notes of 'Na Na Na' faded out and we plunged into the unknown world of Danger Days, Track Three. Everything about being an MCR fan seemed shiny and new and unbelievably exciting, and overflowing with possibility.
But as excited as I was at first, seeing what they got up to and how alive the new shows seemed to be, as the World Contamination Tour went on over the following year, it just felt further and further away. Instead of enjoying watching videos of the band's shows online, or hearing accounts from friends who were there, I started hating it, because everyone was having so much fun and I just never got a chance to join in. The band seemed to tour the US, Europe and Japan again and again without ever coming somewhere I could even consider travelling to, and more and more, being a fan of this band, and knowing so many other fans all over the world started to make me feel shut out instead of included.
Part of it is just the way I act as a fan. I don't really do squee, and I absolutely don't do hyperbole. Not to mention that I don't think the members of this band, or any band, are wonderful, perfect, magical people - I think they're normal flawed people who are in a band. (And sometimes do shitty things, which I'm not going to pretend are okay because they're done by someone I like. I'm looking at you, Frank "go sit on a coathanger" Iero.) I don't think they're essentially different from any other band I like. And somewhere along the line I started to feel like a bad fan because I didn't, as the saying goes, drink the Kool-Aid.
And it doesn't help when you keep hearing, over and over again, how incredible their live shows are when you never fucking get to see any.
Most of the time I don't believe that I'm entitled to anything as a fan. The thing is, though, this wasn't the start of my frustration with MCR - it was the peak of it. The last time I'd seen the band play live was in 2007, when they put on a show that was frankly kind of shit. Bob was in hospital, they were all tired, and when they got up on stage it was painfully clear that they didn't actually want to be there. Then they were announced as headliners for Soundwave Festival here in 2010 and I thought, finally, I'll see them again when they're fresh and enjoying themselves, and all together. Except that then they pulled out of the tour and I'd paid over $100 non-refundable dollars for a festival that no longer featured the band I wanted to see.
So yeah, I felt like they did owe me something. By the time Reading & Leeds came around, every time someone said "Thank you MCR" I thought "Fuck you, MCR" instead. The only good thing about it was that I had a bunch of friends who were in the same boat. I really think masterpenguin82 and barefoot_starz are the only ones who really know how deep my bitterness got, because they shared it, and we could all be grumpy we-love-you-but-we-hate-you fans together. (I'd include pikasafire in this, but I think she was always better at staying positive than I was. Especially since she flew to the US to see them anyway. :p) It's not the only reason we got to be such close friends, but it helped.
We found out that MCR were playing at Big Day Out the evening before I flew out to Adelaide to see Panic at the Disco with them - the timing couldn't have been better if we tried. I officially put my bitterness on hold for a weekend to just be EXCITED, and we talked with delight about how great it was going to be to see them at last. And there was nothing more I wanted than to finally see the band with these friends, my comrades-in-grumpiness who had shared my bitterness and torn feelings at the way we'd felt jilted as fans for so long.
And then things changed, and plans had to be changed, and in the end it turned out I'd be going to Big Day Out without any of my fangirl friends, and masterpenguin82 and barefoot_starz wouldn't get to see the band play at all. For a while I felt bad about it, because it didn't seem fair, but I got to see MCR at a sideshow with pikasafire as well as kashiichan who had been through all the highs and lows of past shitty/cancelled tours with me, and in the end I got a really fantastic three days.
Sunday, Big Day Out, and a moment to myself
I did a review of BDO already, but I want to talk about it specifically for a moment here. I was disappointed that I didn't get to share this moment, the first time I'd seen this band in five years, with other friends who had wanted it just as badly at various points, but in a way it was kind of awesome that I got it to myself, too. I was right on the barrier, on left hand side of the stage, but I could see everything. (And get cups of water from the security staff to pour over my head because damn it was hot, and plus it made the headbanging more fun.) After all the times I'd had to listen to other people's accounts of MCR concerts and feel left out of such awesome experiences, I got to have one that was just mine, that nobody else got, either. And though it probably doesn't make much sense to anyone else, it kind of straightened me out, made everything feel okay again.
It's because it was amazing, not at all the disappointment I'd prepared myself for, and because it was just like seeing any other band. I'd said to ladyfoxxx a few weeks earlier that I wished sometimes I could just go back to thinking of MCR as a band and not THE band, the fandom, the community, everything. But it was just a normal band experience, like any other awesome band I go and see, and it was a relief because it made me realise that it's okay to think of them as ordinary human beings. It's okay that I don't think they're made of pixie dust or that they're the best people in the world. It doesn't mean I love them less that a fan who only talks about them in hyperbole and thinks they can do no wrong. I'm as much a fan as anyone else and I just fucking loved watching them play.
And I guess after a year of feeling shut out, there's a kind of beautiful justification in getting something that feels like it's just yours.
Monday, exhaustion and a signing
About a week before the tour began, notalwaysweak casually mentioned that the JB Hi-Fi below the office where she works was hosting an MCR signing the day after BDO and you could go in and get wristbands to take part. I promptly ran down there as fast as I could, got wristbands for myself and roxy-palace because she'd still be in Melbourne and she asked for one too, and then had ice-cream lunch with notalwaysweak while hyperventilating with excitement. Then I promptly started having this weird sense of doubt because it just didn't seem fair that I got to meet My Chemical Romance when masterpenguin82 and barefoot-starz wouldn't even get to see them play.
To cut to the chase, because this is a long enough post already, I resolved to get the band to sign things for masterpenguin82, barefoot-starz and pikasafire while I was there, and somehow I ended up making these:
The top one is for barefoot-starz and the photo sucks and doesn't show most of the design, but it's based on her tattoos. The middle one is for masterpenguin82, based on the album art for Powderfinger's Vulture Street, and the third is for pikasafire and was very, very vaguely inspired by the concept art relating to Darren Hayes' latest album. And post signing:
Frank, Gerard, Mikey, and then Ray's signature on my BDO ticket. If I thought to bring my own Killjoy mask, I would have gotten him to sign that, but I wasn't thinking that much.
I won't say much about the signing. It was cool and sort of unbelievable, because this band had seemed so distant for me for so long. As far as I know, they've never done any kind of meet-the-band/signing events in Australia before, and there was a time when I truly believed they'd never tour here again. To suddenly meet them in the flesh, have them comment on my painting skills and have Frank and Mikey shake my hand, just didn't seem like it should ever be possible. But hey. It happened. roxy-palace even took pictures.
I don't even know. I don't express excitement - or emotions in general - all that well sometimes. unless I'm writing pen and paper letters and come out sounding unnaturally sentimental and a little like Pete Wentz It was another experience that almost just confirmed for me that they're like any other band. But at the same time, holy shit, how is this my life and how do I live in a world where things like that can HAPPEN? What else can you even say? I don't know so I'm not saying anything.
Well, they probably say it to everyone, but they thought my painting was cool. That's something.
Tuesday, a headline show at last, fangirls and pure joy
Festival Hall in Melbourne isn't affectionately shortened to 'Festy Hall' just because it's the obvious way to shorten it. I'd never been to a show there before, with good reason, because it's a kind of awful venue. But I went there for MCR and have no regrets. Kind of the opposite.
I feel sad that the memory of Tuesday night's show is already slipping away a little. Yesterday I could still think back on it and put myself right in the moment, remember exactly what it felt like to sway with Lexi to 'The Only Hope For Me Is You', to hold kashiichan during 'Cancer', or to pretty much brawl with Sassbandit all the way through 'Vampire Money' like we were in our own circle pit of two. Today it's just that bit harder to put myself right in the moment.
Even though I'd been waiting for this show for five years and I'd finally be going with pikasafire (which meant more to me than any of you will ever know) as well as Sassbandit, Wereduck and kashiichan, I'd been preparing myself for disappointment. This was a band that had disappointed me a lot, and even after the unbelievably good time I'd had at BDO and the signing, I still kind of expected it from them. The venue would suck. I wouldn't be able to see anything. The mosh would be awful and I'd get knocked out and have to spend the whole show in First Aid. I'd make some kind of horrible social indecency and go home miserable because I'd damaged a friendship.
And even if none of that happened, how could one show possibly be as good as every one of the amazing concert stories I'd heard from my other friends over the past year?
I honestly don't know how, actually, but it did.
Do I want to go into details? I don't know if I can, or if I should. I have a horrible memory for setlists, though there's one on setlist.fm to aid my memory, but it's not really the point. There was the start of the show, with an eight-year-old dressed as Kobra Kid introducing the band before 'Look Alive, Sunshine' kicked in. There was Ray right in front of me, rocking out all night with a ferocity that I didn't know he was capable of. There was Gerard leaning out over the corner of the stage above us at the end of Planetary GO! and throwing a pink feather boa into the audience. There was Mikey tossing his his hair around magnificently. And there's James Dewees playing BASICALLY EVERYTHING, who is pretty much my favourite member of the band now even though he's not technically in the band. There was lots of Gerard swishiness and showponying, and the utterly gorgeous moment in the encore when he saw baby!Kobra Kid grooving at the side of the stage and pulled him out to the centre so they could both pogo together in front of everyone.
If you know the band, you know which songs feel amazing to dance to live, and why. For me it was special because of the people there, because I've never felt such a perfect balance between being carried away by the music and being so connected to my friends. Whether it was holding hands with kashiichan through the songs that hurt for both of us or roughhousing with Sassbandit, which was a new kind of high that I didn't even know I could get. Dancing with pikasafire because it will always be one of my favourite things and she just knows, okay, I don't have to explain. Even concert calling people I was missing made the whole experience better.
I didn't think just going to one concert could make me feel so connected to a community I'd started to feel separate from, but it did. And it made me realise how much I still fucking love this band, not because they're heroes but because they're a band like any other and they make fucking good music, and just like any band that makes fucking good music, nothing feels better than seeing them play it when you're surrounded by other people who love it too.
And you know the real test? I could have gone to Noel Gallagher that night instead, and I found out afterwards that Nic Cester was at Noel's show. And if I had the choice again, I'd still go to MCR.
So that was probably just about the most useless gig review ever. But come on. These things have always been more for me than for you.
Though not entirely about me, because if it was there would be even more detail about dancing and ~feelings and how Mikeyway is the only member of the band I felt even slightly inclined to vault over the table and kiss. But some details have to stay aaaall mine.